


B(

by punkdavekat



Series: the coolkid blues [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, M/M, Self Harm, really graphic self harm, seriously this shit is very detailed, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 11:10:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4703888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkdavekat/pseuds/punkdavekat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vent fic of Dave looking at his scars and adding more. Seriously can be triggering as fuck please be careful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	B(

**Author's Note:**

> Had to write it out and what better way to avoid my problems than to project them onto fictional characters.

Your hands are shaking as you pick up the x-acto blade. 

Scars litter your body. Your thighs are covered in jagged pink lines, some puffy and raised, and some that have faded to white. You have a particularly deep scar on your ribcage that you gave yourself with a medical-grade scalpel. The scar is so deep that it, too, has become raised. You can feel it through even your bulkiest hoodie, if you drag your fingers across your side. Your left arm is covered from wrist to elbow. This was always your favorite place; it’s easiest to access and will bleed the most. You could turn shallow red lines into gaping holes in your skin, there. 

You’ve passed out from blood loss a few times, but you’ve never had to go to the hospital for one. There have been many times when you should have gotten stitches but didn’t, because any doctor who treated you would have you put on suicide-watch in a mental hospital again. You’ve been five times over the years, and raising that number is always too awkward, so you left them to heal and leave more ugly scar tissue. 

You always look at your scars before you do anything. Now you have to remember not to go too deep, to keep them shallow because you don’t want Karkat to see how far you’re slipping. He always blames himself for your fuck-ups. Sometimes he will be dead tired, almost passing out from exhaustion, but will fight to stay awake with you on nights like these. 

You only really have Bad Nights when he’s not with you, so he’s loathe to leave you alone. You wish he didn’t care so much because you don’t deserve it. He shouldn’t feel responsible for your safety or guilty when you do it again. You’d much rather he do anything but be burdened with your irrationality, and yet the idea of him leaving hurts more than anything you could do to yourself. 

You wonder if he looks for new additions when you have sex. It makes you kind of relieved that usually your head is thrown back and your eyes are screwed shut. There have been times when you were changing ( _quickly, please don’t look, please don’t see how disgusting-_ ) and he sees more lacerations littering your skin. It’s painful every time, because he looks at you with pity and adoration you don’t deserve etched across his features. His eyes always swim with tears.

You change in front of Karkat because you refuse to hide anything from him. It feels too much like lying. As much as it hurts to watch him watching you, it would hurt more if he were to stop trusting you. 

(You only revel in the pain that you can control.)

Your blade is too dull. It leaves tiny, raised pink lines instead of scratches. You press harder.  
Now you’ve got a superficial wound on your upper thigh; a barely-there scratch that barely produces a drop of blood. You get frustrated. It isn’t enough, and it never really is. You used to be able to do more, to challenge yourself and push your limits until you felt warm blood dripping off of you and onto your mattress. It used to be very satisfying to barely graze your fingers across the wounds and have them come back covered in blood. 

But that can only happen if your cuts are deeper than these shitty chicken scratches. You don’t have that luxury anymore, so you decide to make up for quality with quantity. You only move from your thighs after you’ve left yourself three neat rows of wounds and a few haphazard cuts across the fattest parts of both of your thighs. You can’t do much on your arms because it is summer, and you’re sure that wearing sleeves or a hoodie in the excruciating heat would make people suspicious, but you make a tiny nick across your only vertical scar. Higher up on your wrists, where your bracelets will cover it, you allow yourself one semi-decent gash. Then you move back further down, at the inside of your elbow. 

One good cut there could end it all. You long to slice the veins you can see gathered there, but there is one person holding you back. Instead you move off of the main veins and onto a bunch of smaller arteries and give yourself a solid but shallow cut. 

You’re not sated, but you can feel yourself losing control. It starts with that eerie calm, but then your hands will twitch with energy and you imagine yourself dragging the blade across your skin over and over until all of your skin is mangled and bleeding. You close your eyes and see beautiful red. 

You have to snap out of it. You drop the blade and begin to count. 

38 shallow strikes. They’re not enough but you can’t allow yourself any more. Karkat will think you went overboard as it is. 

(A niggling thought in the back of your mind: he thinks one is going overboard. He hasn’t seen what I can do.) 

It is time to clean up. You grab the roll of toilet paper you keep for this occasion and wipe the small amount of blood on your skin off, and then clean your blade. As you put it away, you think, “they’ll be gone before he sees me again.” 

He can only ever sneak to see you long enough that you get a tiny taste of feeling whole again before it is dragged away from you. It’s not his choice, and you can see the guilt eating away at him every time he has to leave. 

You can usually hold back your tears until after he’s gone. Tomorrow you will shake next to him as the clock ticks down. Your eyes will fill with tears and you will avoid his gaze. You’ll hold in the sobs until you’re sure he can’t hear the echoes of your cries as he walks away. 

You allow yourself a few minutes of mourning before you force yourself to calm down. You’ll have to wait outside until your face gets less blotchy. You readjust your shades before you walk in the house.

Striders don’t cry.


End file.
